Performance of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager for Mapping Ice Sheet Velocity
Landsat imagery has long been used to measure glacier and ice sheet surface velocity, and this application has increased with increased length and accessibility of the archive. The radiometric characteristics of Landsat sensors, however, have limited these measurements generally to only fast-flowing...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6505706 2023-05-15T16:40:26+02:00 Performance of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager for Mapping Ice Sheet Velocity Jeong, Seongsu Howat, Ian M. 2015-09-26 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6505706/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2015.08.023 en eng http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6505706/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2015.08.023 Article Text 2015 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2015.08.023 2019-05-12T00:24:26Z Landsat imagery has long been used to measure glacier and ice sheet surface velocity, and this application has increased with increased length and accessibility of the archive. The radiometric characteristics of Landsat sensors, however, have limited these measurements generally to only fast-flowing glaciers with high levels of surface texture and imagery with high sun angles and cloud-free conditions, preventing wide-area velocity mapping at the scale achievable with synthetic aperture radar (SAR). The Operational Land Imager (OLI) aboard the newly launched Landsat 8 features substantially improves radiometric performance compared to preceding sensors: enhancing performance of automated Repeat-Image Feature Tracking (RIFT) for mapping ice flow speed. In order to assess this improvement, we conduct a comparative study of OLI and the Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) performance for measuring glacier velocity in a range of surface and atmospheric conditions. To isolate the effects of radiometric quantization and noise level, we construct a model for simulating ETM+ imagery from OLI and compare RIFT results derived from each. We find that a nonlinearity in the relationship between ETM+ and OLI radiances at higher brightness levels results in a particularly large improvement in RIFT performance over the low-textured interior of the ice sheets, as well as improved performance in adverse conditions such as low sun-angles and thin clouds. Additionally, the reduced noise level in OLI imagery results in fewer spurious motion vectors and improved RIFT performance in all conditions and surfaces. We conclude that OLI imagery should enable large-area ice sheet and glacier mapping so that its coverage is comparable to SAR, with a remaining limitation being image geolocation. Text Ice Sheet PubMed Central (PMC) Remote Sensing of Environment 170 90 101 |
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Article Jeong, Seongsu Howat, Ian M. Performance of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager for Mapping Ice Sheet Velocity |
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Landsat imagery has long been used to measure glacier and ice sheet surface velocity, and this application has increased with increased length and accessibility of the archive. The radiometric characteristics of Landsat sensors, however, have limited these measurements generally to only fast-flowing glaciers with high levels of surface texture and imagery with high sun angles and cloud-free conditions, preventing wide-area velocity mapping at the scale achievable with synthetic aperture radar (SAR). The Operational Land Imager (OLI) aboard the newly launched Landsat 8 features substantially improves radiometric performance compared to preceding sensors: enhancing performance of automated Repeat-Image Feature Tracking (RIFT) for mapping ice flow speed. In order to assess this improvement, we conduct a comparative study of OLI and the Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) performance for measuring glacier velocity in a range of surface and atmospheric conditions. To isolate the effects of radiometric quantization and noise level, we construct a model for simulating ETM+ imagery from OLI and compare RIFT results derived from each. We find that a nonlinearity in the relationship between ETM+ and OLI radiances at higher brightness levels results in a particularly large improvement in RIFT performance over the low-textured interior of the ice sheets, as well as improved performance in adverse conditions such as low sun-angles and thin clouds. Additionally, the reduced noise level in OLI imagery results in fewer spurious motion vectors and improved RIFT performance in all conditions and surfaces. We conclude that OLI imagery should enable large-area ice sheet and glacier mapping so that its coverage is comparable to SAR, with a remaining limitation being image geolocation. |
format |
Text |
author |
Jeong, Seongsu Howat, Ian M. |
author_facet |
Jeong, Seongsu Howat, Ian M. |
author_sort |
Jeong, Seongsu |
title |
Performance of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager for Mapping Ice Sheet Velocity |
title_short |
Performance of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager for Mapping Ice Sheet Velocity |
title_full |
Performance of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager for Mapping Ice Sheet Velocity |
title_fullStr |
Performance of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager for Mapping Ice Sheet Velocity |
title_full_unstemmed |
Performance of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager for Mapping Ice Sheet Velocity |
title_sort |
performance of landsat 8 operational land imager for mapping ice sheet velocity |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6505706/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2015.08.023 |
genre |
Ice Sheet |
genre_facet |
Ice Sheet |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6505706/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2015.08.023 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2015.08.023 |
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Remote Sensing of Environment |
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170 |
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90 |
op_container_end_page |
101 |
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1766030829638647808 |